Old Bridges in Bragança – Building a Landscape Heritage

Abstract

Hopefully, this paper will help to contribute to the awareness and knowledge of old bridges in the territory of Bragança, which can and should be understood as key elements of the landscape, regarded as heritage landscape units, under permanent transformation. One tries to look at those different types of existing old bridges, like parts of this palimpsest in human interactions with the environment, which one calls culture.

The analysis proposed in this paper is focused not only on the old bridges themselves, acting as isolated objects, but mostly on the old road networks in which they were included, distinguishing the different types of roads that one can identify in Bragança nowadays, as a natural outcome of the social, cultural and economic background over the centuries and millennia. Ultimately, this paper will contribute to the enhancement of public policies to rehabilitate the old road systems in Bragança, in a coherent and integrated way.